A Knocking at Midnight

In London for medical treatment, Chile's ex-dictator finds himself arrested to face old charges of murder

Before he gave up power to a democratically elected government in 1990, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte erected a legal fortress around himself. His 17 years of iron-fisted, right-wing military rule had been blamed for the death or disappearance of 3,400 suspected communists and leftists, not to mention the torture of thousands of others. With that legacy hanging over his head, Pinochet rammed through an array of constitutional measures that made him immune to prosecution, including a lifetime Senator's seat that he took amid widespread protest last March, when he retired as an army general. "The locks and bolts made...

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